Bengaluru: The National Association of Software and Services Companies - NASSCOM, has requested the Union Government to relax norms and rules which regulate the education sector in order to generate quality human resources in the country.

The urgent need of participation of private industries in the education sector was discussed at NASSCOM's ITeS/BPO Summit held in Bengaluru.

Speaking at the summit Genpact CEO & President Pramod Bhasin said that, "It is not just IT sector or BPO, which is facing attrition. All growing sectors like banking & financial services and retail are facing tremendous shortage of human resources. Unfortunately, Government rules do not allow private organizations to start educational institutions".

Mr. Bhasin pointed out that India has immense potential to produce world class human resources. "But the curriculum needs to be updated regularly. Our educational resources have to be mobilized. It is important to produce quality human resources because clients now are not only coming for cost, but also for quality," he added.

According to industry estimates, attrition rate in voice-based BPO is in excess of 50%. Also the attrition rate in non-voice BPO ranges between 20-30%.

The BPO sector is also expending more for training; the cost is increasing at $300 per person.

"To overcome the situation of attrition in these sectors we need to develop quality human resources right from the classroom-end. We have to develop the technical and managerial skills among the candidates. In India, Government universities do not conduct classes in the afternoon. Why can't we use the classrooms for training? We are even ready to train the trainers," Bhasin argued.

Among others who delivered their opinion at the summit were Dell International Servcies MD Ganesh Lakshminarayanan, EXL Services CEO Vikram Talwar and FirstSource Solutions CEO Ananda Mukherji.

Mr. Mukherji said that BPO firms are now moving to secondary and tertiary cities in search of quality talent with attrition increasing in the top IT clusters.

FirstSource Solutions, which started with two centres in Mumbai and Bangalore, has now spread to eight cities.

He further added that, "there is a salary difference of 25-30% between IT clusters and secondary cities. This is high time that BPOs go to secondary and tertiary cities to improve profitability and cut down attrition."